Moving carefully to keep from crashing through the floor, which was dissolving as fast as Hugo, we cleared the house in record time, Occam taking photographs on a cheap disposable camera that no one would miss if it was destroyed by the death energies. There were no more bodies, either alive to rescue, or dead to not retrieve. We eased out, staggered egress to prevent us falling through, and rushed back to our cars. “Clear,” T. Laine said, her voice too loud and stressed. “Accessing comms.”
The stench clung to my uni, to my mask, and even when I yanked off the P3E, the reek was still a part of me. I felt as if I’d never be clean again. I put in my earbud and heard FireWind speaking over the freq channel. “—have just spoken to the newly elected leader of the Witch Council of the United States of America. She has agreed that this death and decay, though not a witch working, is a type of spell against humans, and therefore falls under the category of workings which they do and will police. They have agreed to assist in capturing and punishing the magic practitioner who set death and decay in motion. They have null room prisons in New Orleans that are better equipped to handle such a magic user than anything we have here.”
“How did you get them to cooperate?” T. Laine asked.
“That is a story for another time,” he said. “For now, I want you all away from the house until we determine the next course of action. Come back to the city PD and sit in the portable null room.”
“Copy,” T. Laine said. “But we need to get a coven to sit a circle around Hugo Ames’ house pronto and put a shield around the death and decay. It’s already spread and it’s working faster than the others. I can’t promise that it can be contained. If it reaches bedrock or a water table, we’re screwed.”
“Noted,” FireWind said. “I’ll make some calls.”
* * *
* * *
The null room was boring, but there was a box of donuts and three sandwiches on the table inside and the chairs were more comfortable than my previous experience. We also had Wi-Fi and chargers for our electronics so we could write our reports, work, eat, and get nullified all at once. Nullify. A good word for the process.
While we were in the portable null room trailer, Rick sent us a group text. I had missed my boss, or at least missed his input to cases. He didn’t go around with a stick up his backside like some bosses. His text said, County records: Hugo’s landlady lives near his house. When you get nullified, go talk to her.
“No rest for the wicked,” T. Laine said. She stretched her shoulders as if she wanted her shoulder blades to touch. She looked more and more tired. Yet there was a softness there that I hadn’t noticed while we were facing danger. And she was wearing a thin gold bracelet that was new. “Pretty bracelet,” I said.
T. Laine blushed and, attempting to sound offhand and casual, said, “Gonzales got it for me.” She held it out and I saw the five small green stones.
“Emeralds?” Emeralds were expensive.
“Yeah,” she said, her voice and expression going soft. “The card said, ‘Emeralds are called the Stones of Successful Love.’” She looked from the bracelet to me. “And flowers. Every week, he sends me flowers. I never had a man send me flowers before. He sent me a gift certificate for a massage. Can you believe it? A massage! What kind of guy thinks about that?”
A second text came through, this one from FireWind. LaFleur and Racer’s raid on Merry Promotions discovered that all boxes of T-shirts ordered for the tour were shipped before the tour. No one knows about a box delivered later, though one employee thinks there were overruns, none of which can be found. It is still feasible that Hugo applied magical energies to a box of shirts, delivered them after the start of the music tour, and set up the trigger when he positioned them in the swag room, then accidentally contaminated himself. However, all records indicate he never displayed the faintest hint of magic, and the figure delivering the shirts appears much smaller than Hugo’s records indicate.
All of which meant that Hugo, despite blackmailing one of Stella Mae’s lovers, was looking less likely to be Stella’s killer. We were back